September 2006

September 10, 2006

On the eve of nine-eleven I look to the heavens and am rewarded by a thousand darting swifts. Gathering on their southward migration, thousands of Vaux’s Swifts swirl and float in the September sky above NW Portland’s Chapman school. At this age when the news brings voices of anger and hatred, it is reassuring to know that the pilgrimage of these small birds brought people together for a common good. It is reassuring to know that school children and adults came together to take action, to make small sacrifices for the benefit of nature. As I watch the whirling, acrobatic cloud of birds descend into an abandoned chimney, I am awed by the beauty of the birds and energized by the sight of families and couples, men and women, gathered together again to share in the experience and to wonder as one at the natural world. We watch mesmerized by the magnitude of the flock, we take in a collective breath as a falcon darts from the surrounding trees and snatches a meal. We cheer and clap as the light fades and the final group of birds ends its day and drops, individual by individual, into the human-made old growth snag that is their roost.

It is now dark. Time for us to leave too. We are individuals again ourselves, but we have shared an experience of beauty and, I can’t help believe, that we all leave restored, that we all leave a little more humane.

With an eye on nature,

Wally

August 2006

17 August 2006

August in Oregon is harvest time and a walk through peach orchards and cornfields brings unexpected vistas of the life and death activities that abound. A ladybird beetle cleans her antennae after devouring a thrip (a miniscule plant juice sucking insect) and waits in stillness for its next victim. A darkling beetle takes up residence inside a discarded peach seed, perhaps avoiding the mid-day sun or scraping nutrients from the dried insides. Native and alien bees alight side-by-side on flowers grown to beautify our houses, but that also serve to fill their nearby hives’ larders with sweet nectar. Solitary wasps fill themselves with another flower’s ambrosia and convert the fuel to eggs, thereby insuring future generations of pollinators. Two damselflies, with their metallic blue bodies, are locked in copulation. The male’s abdominal pincer fixed behind the female’s head, providing a pivot point for the female to bring her own abdomen below his to access the sperm needed to fertilize her eggs. The intricate dance and lock and key arrangement of appendages provide security in mating and prevent the hybridization of species. Above this scene of procreation, barn swallows click and chatter in aerial dog- fights and feeding frenzies. With the clear blue backdrop, their movements seem for a moment to be those of swimmers rather than flyers and I suppose the difference is minimal. To heavy lumbering beings such as us, the viscosity of air is inadequate, but for the feather light creatures above, air provides all that is needed for movement--another piece of evidence that it is all about perspective. But perspective is for us to ponder. For the animals in these waning days of summer, there is too much to do before day’s end. Too much to do before the sun sets and the harvest ends.

With an eye on nature,

Wally